Fasten your seatbelts!

Mating rock guitar with electronic dance dance rhythms, Japan’s The Sun Paulo can only be described as a musical roller-coaster, careering through impossibly-convoluted twists, turns and dazzling displays of kinetic virtuosity shot with rampant, crazed energy. Although musical reference points aren’t hard to spot, the freewheeling, quite natural way they’re gobbled up and spewed back out at often blinding speed makes for a listening experience quite unlike anything else on the planet.

Leading the charge is guitarist and founder member Taiji Sato. He started the project in 2000 with DJ Really? who left in 2002 to be replaced by renowned session players Toshiyuki Mori on keyboards and drummer Takashi Numazawa. They’ve since played a host of major festivals, released their debut album After the Eclipse, soundtracked the movie Kalalu and started Tokyo’s regular Wisdom parties.

Electric Wisdom Sound System can switch gear several times during the course of one track, like But We Want More, which eventually settles into a mighty slavering funk beast, or, even more extreme, the three part Electric Western, which manages to straddle jazz, beatific piano-string ambience, belting techno and what sounds like the Mahavishnu Orchestra dry-humping System 7 at the Paradise Garage.

Shards of 70s groups like Focus, The Allman Brothers, Santana and The Mothersflash past in what sometimes resembles an aural meteor storm, often colliding with 21st century electronica, all climaxing with an outrageous version of Burt Bacharach’s Close To You which will carry you off to a higher plane altogether.

This album is launch-pad, take-off and best part of one of the strangest trips anyone has had the skill or plain nerve to attempt in recent years.